The children of course were oblivious to the magnitude of what lay ahead. They were still in the sweet spot of innocence, glorious naivety. It was one of the attractions of attempting the climb while they were still basking in childhood optimism and hopefulness, to avoid them having to face the reality of the risks ahead.
Marina was quieter than usual. I could sense the weight of Everest on her shoulders. The burden of the unknown that she would carry for the next few weeks as she continued with life back in London while I began my trek deep into the Himalayas. We smiled and laughed, but there was an air of sadness. Perhaps it was the rain and the thunder, but it felt heavy. It clung to us.
And now, here we were at Colombo Airport where our lives would separate. No more family smiles, hugs, laughter …
I waited until the last call for my flight. I wanted to put off the goodbyes for as long as I could.
I scooped up the children who enveloped me like an octopus. I squeezed them and inhaled their smell. I nuzzled their necks and whispered into their ears, ‘Look after Mummy.’
‘Have fun, Daddy,’ they both smiled with that innocence and excitement that only children can muster.
‘Please keep safe,’ hugged Marina, ‘we need you.’
We both cried. I didn’t want the children to see my tears. They have seen me cry before and it’s important for children to know they can cry, but this felt different. The tears felt like an admission of fear and I didn’t want them to fear Everest. I wanted them to be excited and inspired by the mountain.
The tears felt like a weakness, liquid fear. In a way they were. My stomach was knotted and twisted. I have left my family for plenty of risky expeditions over the years, but this one felt different – it felt bigger, taller, badder.
I had struggled to rationalise my yearning to climb Mount Everest with my role as husband and father. After all, being a dad is a primary role. It’s not something that you just do part-time. It comes with responsibility and commitment.
I need them and they need me.
Shortly before I left, I had asked the children to give me something special that I could take to the summit with me. Ludo chose his panda teddy bear that he’d had since he was a small child, known as Pandear, and Iona, a little more inexplicably, chose a carrot dog toy.
As well as the two stuffed children’s toys, I wanted to take something else. One of Ludo’s favourite things in the whole world is his silver shark’s tooth necklace. He got it while we were in the Bahamas and he never takes it off. ‘Can I borrow your shark’s tooth to wear to the summit?’ I asked him. It was a big ask, but without hesitation, Ludo placed it around my neck. In its place, I made Ludo a special necklace that I placed around his neck.
That little necklace ceremony was profoundly moving. The silver shark’s tooth had such a profound power and energy. It was a reminder always of what was waiting for me at home.
As the dregs of the harsh winter loitered into March, Ben packed for three months away – two weeks of tropical heat in Sri Lanka, a teardrop-shaped jewel of a country for an amazing family vacation, and two months of extreme altitude in one of the harshest terrains on the planet.
Our holiday was blissful. We travelled through the verdant land, racing along the endless beaches, surfing and releasing turtle hatchlings back into the sea. We fell in love with stray dogs, learned about different curries and watched in awe as blue whales breached majestically in the gargantuan ocean. As our halcyon holiday neared an end, I felt the wave of anxiety welling up in my chest. Our goodbye was fast approaching, and I wanted to put a pause on our bliss.
My mother reminded me that I’ve never been good at goodbyes as Ben left for the South Pole and my face was a blurry sea of tears. When my holidays ended and I had to return to boarding school, my tears would start two days before I actually left. The anticipation was often worse than the actual goodbye.
Distraction is the only thing that helps and for me this came in the form of Ludo and Iona, whose emotions it was my job to temper.
In the days before we left for Sri Lanka, Ben asked the children to think of something special for him to take up Everest. He asked them to give it some thought, and had the idea that it would be a poignant thing for the film crew to record before he left.
We gathered the children and asked them to fetch the prized objects that Ben would carry to the roof of the world. They disappeared to their rooms and returned shortly after, bearing their prized possessions. With great reverence, they presented to Ben these carefully selected talismans. His eyes looking earnestly into Ben’s, Ludo placed a skiing medal (third place) that he had won earlier in the year on a family ski trip. In the meantime, Iona pressed a squeaky carrot dog toy that she had bought in the garden centre that weekend.
A consummate professional in front of the camera, even Ben couldn’t hide his surprise. He did a good job at feigning excitement, but he is not an actor and when the cameras had stopped he asked why they’d come up with the choices they had. ‘My medal is my most precious thing – it’s real gold!’ Ludo exclaimed, bursting with pride. ‘And I just love my squeaky carrot,’ explained Iona. ‘I know it’s meant to be a dog toy but it makes me laugh, and you know I love carrots!’ After a gentle explanation that his ski school medal was not in fact made of a precious metal, Ludo agreed to send his beloved panda with Ben instead: appropriately threadbare and well-loved and conveniently small and light, it fit the bill perfectly. Iona, however, demonstrated all the confidence and stubbornness that we love in our seven-year-old, and nothing would convince her to change her mind.
Ben’s flight to Kathmandu left half an hour before our London-bound flight. As his flight was called, he gave the children one last hug, clutching the precious toys they’d given him to take to the top of the world, Ludo’s beloved shark’s tooth necklace around his neck. I gulped back my tears.
‘Make sure you come home safe,’ I mumbled through my sobs as I clutched his broad shoulders and buried my head in his neck. He nodded and held me tight. ‘I love you,’ he whispered, ‘don’t ever forget that’ and with that he was gone, his tear-stained face turning back to me to wave as he walked down the long airport corridor.
I hastily wiped the tears off my face, returning to the children. We sat, perched by the window overlooking the runway as we watched Ben’s plane taxi away, frantically waving, the children electrified with excitement that we could actually see his plane and with innocent joy at the adventure that lay ahead of him; while I tried to muffle my sobs and crossed my fingers that the luck that had defined our lives up until this point was not about to run out.
Being a father is my proudest achievement. My children are my all. I would do everything and anything for them. I would give my life for them. So why was I risking my life?
Life, of course, is full of compromise. Society instills so many ‘values’ and ‘expectations’ on all of us. There is an assumption when you marry and start a family that you will conform to an idea of parenthood. And life, of course, is also filled with sacrifices, but here’s the thing: who are you if you have sacrificed the very things that made you the person you were? You are pretending to be the person people expect you to be, rather than the person you really are. Isn’t that being disingenuous when we as parents are trying to instil confidence and honesty in our children? Are we not being slightly fraudulent ourselves?
When Ludo and Iona were born, I found myself increasingly careful and risk averse. I think it’s probably instinct, an evolutionary way of telling us to preserve and protect. The thing about adventure is that it has made me the person I am. Without it, I would be no one. You see, I was never really good at anything.